Part 5: A wife soldiers on

When Corporal Jordan Anderson prepared to go to war he made sure his wife knew what to expect should the worst happen.

“He told me that the case that he comes home in is called a transfer case and that there is dry ice in it. It’s not the casket. I would have to choose a casket for him,” said Amanda Anderson.

Cpl. Anderson told his wife details she didn’t want to hear, following her from room to room when she refused to listen.

“He told me, ‘If I am shot you might be able to see my body depending on where I was shot, but if it is an IED, don’t even expect to see me.’ ”

In this, Cpl. Anderson, who died when a massive IED killed him and six others, was wrong.

“Maybe two days before the funeral they said that I could see him. He looked almost like himself. He just had a small scratch on one cheek,” she said.

Cpl. Anderson even told his wife how the news would be broken to her.

“He told me that if two officers came to the door, he was wounded and that if three officers came to the door, he was dead.”

On July 4, 2007, at 7:02 a.m. Ms. Anderson answered her front door to find four soldiers standing there.

“I laughed at them and said, ‘There are too many of you.’ ”

Four years later, Ms. Anderson is still struggling to come to grips with what happened, still fighting emotions of pride, grief and anger, still looking for meaning in her husband’s death.

Ms. Anderson first met her future husband in the summer of 2001 when he was in Ottawa for two weeks as part of a rifle-shooting team.

“I noticed he was cute … and was wearing a yellow shirt,” she said.

Over drinks, he told her he was a soldier based in Edmonton, but his family home was farther north, in Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories.

For the next two weeks, they spent every spare moment together. Cpl Anderson eventually returned to Edmonton, but was back in Ottawa within weeks.

Ms. Anderson realized he was the “one” that week. They went out for dinner together, she said, and as the doors opened she looked back over her shoulder. “I love him — I don’t even know him,” she thought.

They drove her Toyota Camry back to Edmonton together and Ms. Anderson moved in with her aunt in the west end.

“I didn’t think it was quite right just to move in with him. I mean, really, I just came out for a vacation — just to see where things were going with him,” she said.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Cpl. Anderson was on a Mountain Ops course at Ghost River, near Canmore in the Rocky Mountains. The Edmonton Garrison went on lockdown, and his unit was put on 48-72 hours notice to move.

In February of 2002, he went to war.

“It’s OK if you go back home while I am gone, but I’d like it if you would come back for when I get home,” he told her.

Ms. Anderson wrote letters — a lot of letters. So did Cpl. Anderson.

“At that time they had two sat phones and two computers for a thousand guys. The phone calls were just awful … the delay. It was really frustrating. But the conversations were good,” she said.

On a bright day in July 2002, a crowd of thousands — five deep — stood under the ribbons on 97th street in Edmonton. The Princess Patricia’s were coming home, bloodied but having done their country proud.

Four Canadians had been killed in a friendly fire accident during the tour — Canada’s first deaths in the war.

“He was very pleased to see me. He said that was when he knew that I was the ‘one’ — when I stayed through the whole tour,” she said.

They were married in 2005. Cpl. Anderson wore his airborne dress uniform and Ms. Anderson had the colours of his maroon parachute beret built into the sash of her wedding gown.

On Ms. Anderson’s 30th birthday in 2005, Cpl. Anderson’s parachute training almost ended his career when a jump went wrong and he crushed two vertebrae.

The doctors gave him a 2% chance of ever jumping again and only a 10% chance of being able to stay in the infantry. But he refused to give up.

“He was able to heal because he was so dedicated,” Ms. Anderson said.

When he jumped again the surgeon met him at the landing zone to congratulate him.

“He loved it. That is what he wanted to do,” she said.

In February 2007, Cpl. Anderson went to war again. In April, he was back on home leave and they spent a few weeks in Florida.

“The last time I saw him was Miami airport. As we were separating, I was going up the escalator and I ducked down just to see him one more time. He looked at me and shrugged as if to say, ‘What’s your problem?’ ” she said, smiling.

“The last time he talked to me, the sat phone kept cutting out. He tried calling me for about 45 minutes or an hour and then we managed to connect for five minutes before it cut out again. And I am sure he was thinking, ‘Well, I’ll talk to her in a couple of days,’ and I am sure I was bitching about work.”

On July 4, 2007, while returning from a patrol just south of Nakhonay in Panjwaii district an RG-31 armoured vehicle carrying six Canadian soldiers and an Afghan interpreter hit an improvised explosive device (IED). Up to that point, the RG-31 had been considered one of the safest means of transport around the mine-infested road system.

This bomb, however, was so huge no amount of clever design engineering could have saved the occupants. The explosion sent the vehicle dozens of metres into the air. Everyone on board died instantly.

It was the worst single-event death toll in the war to that point. Cpl. Anderson was one of the six Canadians.

Deployment-delayed grief is a condition affecting spouses of soldiers. Left behind regularly for long periods by their military partners during deployment and training, they become used to the rhythm of being alone, then having their loved ones return.

When soldiers are killed, their spouses are in a form of denial. They are waiting for their partners to walk through the door even though they know, and accept, they are gone.

On good days, Ms. Anderson understands Cpl. Anderson is gone and he would want her to push ahead with her life. On bad days, she expects him to come walking in the door at any moment.

Much of the four years since his death has been a blur. She has dealt with all the expectations heaped on her by society, family and the military. She has dutifully attended every funeral, memorial and parade. All with Cpl. Anderson at her shoulder helping her, telling her what to expect next. She desperately does not want to let him down.

She still visits the dog park — a very special place. Before Cpl. Anderson died, they went there almost every day to walk their dog, Penny. On Saturday’s they sometimes went twice.

There is a bench there where she had her last real phone conversation with Cpl. Anderson when he had only six weeks left in his rotation.

“It was the last place I ever really spoke to him. I know it’s the last place he told me he loved me,” she said.

In the first years after his death, Ms. Anderson desperately wanted to know more about her husband, his work, his last tour, who he had been. She went parasailing because she wanted to feel what it was like under a canopy and did a jump from a mock tower — the structure trainee parachutists jump off during drills.

“I went paratrooper for the day. I got to shoot and jump off the mock tower. I did freeze at the edge but an instructor talked me through it. I remember being afraid but thinking, ‘I am not going to embarrass Jordan by walking down the stairs,’” she said.

“The guys from his unit were right there. So I just sat down and pushed off. I was terrified.”

In November 2009, she took the opportunity to go to Afghanistan.

“With the emptiness here, I had just lost all hope and I didn’t even care about anything. So I guess it took a long time to accept he wasn’t still over there. And then I went over there, and he’s not sitting at some picnic table.”

She stayed busy. She renovated the house in Edmonton and started a degree in graphic communications. None of it helped her recover.

Two years after his death, Ms. Anderson had a party for Cpl. Anderson’s friends and platoon-mates, and organized a “kit grab” of all his stuff.

“I figured he would want his guys to use it,” she said.

But she is still angry. In her journal, one section deals with people who told her not to be angry, but proud.

She wrote, “I learned that it is OK to be angry. This was a critical realization for me. I don’t have to be shy to express my anger because what has happened in my life is unfair, and things aren’t right in my world. I lost somebody of value. I no longer will trade being proud with anger.

“I will always be proud of my husband and his contributions, but it will also always be unfair that he was taken away from me.”

On July 4, 2011, it was four years since Cpl. Anderson’s death. Ms. Anderson feels she may finally be coming to terms with her loss.

“When I am here at home it just seems like he could walk through the door at any time. I went to Florida about three months ago and I realized how long he had been gone. It took a lot to go back to Florida because it was the last time we had been together.”

Ms. Anderson is now living in Ontario, near all the important places from her past, close to Cpl. Anderson in the military cemetery in Ottawa.

“He would not want me to be upset like this for so long. He would not want me living like that. I have no idea what the future is. But there has to be some good in it somewhere.”

On their wedding day on July 22, 2005, Ms. Anderson carried a bouquet of red roses. Her mom kept it for her.

“I think I am going to put it by his graveside. I think I am ready to do that,” she said.

National Post

All illustrations by Richard Johnson, National Post.
Contact the illustrator: rjohnson@nationalpost.comwww.newsillustrator.com